Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (107 page)

In addition to prodding the Bataan offensive and intervening in the case of the “Doolittle fliers,” the emperor kept closely in touch with operations in Burma and China, still believing these would be the main battle fronts. On at least three occasions during 1942—
February 9, March 19, and May 29—Hirohito pressed Sugiyama to examine the possibilities for an eventual attack on Chungking.
¹⁷
“Can't you figure some way somehow to put an end to the China Incident?” he asked Sugiyama during an audience on May 29. At his urging Sugiyama set in motion the drafting of plans for a major offensive with fifteen divisions to wipe out Chiang's main forces in Szechuan Province and capture Chungking (Operation Gog
).
¹⁸

While these plans were being considered, the navy sustained two successive defeats, and the Pacific suddenly emerged as the critical front in the war, though more than a year would pass before Imperial Headquarters recognized it as such. On May 7–8, as new victories in the Philippines were being reported to the emperor, the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought, giving Japan a tactical victory (in terms of American ship losses) but a strategic defeat in that the Imperial Navy lost a large aircraft carrier and 104 skilled pilots, and had to postpone its planned attack by sea on the Allied stronghold of Port Moresby in New Guinea.
¹⁹

One month later, on June 5–6, the navy suffered another setback, losing four large aircraft carriers, one heavy cruiser, and approximately three thousand men, including 121 skilled pilots, in battles near Midway Island in the Central Pacific.
²⁰
American morale soared; in Tokyo the profound significance of the defeat was overlooked. On June 10 the navy conveyed to the liaison conference an incomplete picture of the results of the battle, on the ground that the real extent of damage was a military secret not to be entrusted to all members.
²¹
Only the emperor was accurately informed of the carrier and pilot losses, and he chose not to inform the army immediately. Army planners, inaccurately briefed on the real significance of the Coral Sea and Midway defeats, continued for a short time to believe that the Combined Fleet was healthy and secure. Did Hirohito himself fail to grasp the import of the twin defeats? Kido, who discussed the naval battle of Midway with Hirohito on June 8, wrote that day:

The navy conducted no post-mortem analysis on the influence its Midway losses might have on future operations.
²³
But later Hirohito and the high command cancelled plans to seize Fiji and Samoa and to begin establishing control of the Indian Ocean. Midway did not cause them to end the South Pacific offensive. The Combined Fleet, however, was forced to conduct its operations around the central and southern Solomons without adequate air cover.

II

A naval officer who assisted Hirohito through many difficult moments of the war was Lt. Comm. J
Eiichir
. A skilled pilot who, late in 1937, had helped plan and direct the first air offensive against China's cities from the aircraft carrier
Kaga
, he was also an amateur scientist with an interest in meteorology. On returning to Japan, he served on the Navy General Staff and taught at the Navy and Army War Colleges. He then went back to China as vice commander of the Thirteenth Naval Air Force, charged with bombing operations deep within China. After a year in China, J
was assigned to the palace. His duties there required him to make daily war situation reports and convey top-secret navy materials and orders to the emperor. He also transmitted the replies of the navy chief of staff and navy minister to the emperor's questions and assisted the emperor as envoy and information collector.

J
was descended from the Kyushu warrior Kikuchi Takefusa,
and his samurai background embodied one of the fundamental vindicating events in the history of Japanese national defense. Kikuchi (according to commentator Nomura Minoru) had participated in saving Japan from the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century, when fortuitous “divine winds” (
kamikaze
) arose to destroy the would-be invaders.
²⁴
This background surely figured in Jo's later determination to save Japan from the American fleet by drawing up the first detailed plan for a “kamikaze” Special Attack Corps in June 1943.
²⁵
Jo's idea of recruiting and training young pilots willing to smash their
Zero
fighters, armed with 550-pound bombs, into the decks of American ships was later adopted and put into practice in the Philippines by his friend, Vice Adm.
nishi Takijir
.

 

Hirohito clearly liked J
, for they shared interests in science and the environment.
²⁶
During his tour of duty at the palace, J
kept a detailed diary that again and again provides a very human view of Hirohito. For example, he suggests that Hirohito had an insatiable appetite for Japanese and German newsreels. (Even after Japan had lost air and sea control in the Pacific, Japanese cameramen at the fronts often managed to supply fresh footage.)
²⁷
Jo describes Hirohito relaxing, celebrating, and performing various public duties. On February 18, 1942, the emperor conducted the first celebration of Pacific war victories by appearing for ten minutes on his white horse on Nijubashi, the famous bridge leading into the palace, where he waved to crowds assembled on the Imperial Plaza. On the evening of February 20, he spent nearly two hours relaxing in the aide-de-camp's duty office.
²⁸